Radio’s War of the Worlds Broadcast (1938)

THE SCRIPT: A transcription of the broadcast is here.
Please note that this is a transcription of what was spoken by the actors
on the broadcast. It is possible that the actors may have deviated slightly from
the original script. The script was copyrighted by the author, Howard Koch, in 1940.
He renewed that copyright in 1968, so that it is still under protection.
Rights are owned by Mr. Koch's widow and are administered by Norman Rudman
(email: nrudman@mcn.org) or (707) 877-3335 in Elk, California.
A reader of this page informed me that he performed the play in a coffee house with a maximum seating
capacity of 60 people, and negotiated a price of $50 per performance.

Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact

A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15
and 9:30 o'clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G.
Wells's fantasy, "The War of the Worlds," led thousands to believe that
an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading
wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York.

The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious
services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was
made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, "The Shadow," used to
give "the creeps" to countless child listeners. This time at least a
score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria.

In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue,
more than twenty families rushed out of their houses with wet
handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they
believed was to be a gas raid. Some began moving household furniture.

Throughout New York families left their homes, some to flee to near-by
parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers and radio
stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada
seeking advice on protective measures against the raids.

The program was produced by Mr. Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the
Air over station WABC and the Columbia Broadcasting System's
coast-to-coast network, from 8 to 9 o'clock.

The radio play, as presented, was to simulate a regular radio program
with a "break-in" for the material of the play. The radio listeners,
apparently, missed or did not listen to the introduction, which was:
"The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present
Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in 'The War of the
Worlds' by H. G. Wells."

They also failed to associate the program with the newspaper listening
of the program, announced as "Today: 8:00-9:00—Play: H. G. Wells's
'War of the Worlds'—WABC." They ignored three additional announcements
made during the broadcast emphasizing its fictional nature.

Mr. Welles opened the program with a description of the series of which
it is a part. The simulated program began. A weather report was given,
prosaically. An announcer remarked that the program would be continued
from a hotel, with dance music. For a few moments a dance program was
given in the usual manner. Then there was a "break-in" with a "flash"
about a professor at an observatory noting a series of gas explosions on
the planet Mars.

News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed, reporting, with the
technique in which the radio had reported actual events, the landing of
a "meteor" near Princeton N. J., "killing" 1,500 persons, the discovery
that the "meteor" was a "metal cylinder" containing strange creatures
from Mars armed with "death rays" to open hostilities against the
inhabitants of the earth.

Despite the fantastic nature of the reported "occurrences," the program,
coming after the recent war scare in Europe and a period in which the
radio frequently had interrupted regularly scheduled programs to report
developments in the Czechoslovak situation, caused fright and panic
throughout the area of the broadcast.

Telephone lines were tied up with calls from listeners or persons who
had heard of the broadcasts. Many sought first to verify the reports.
But large numbers, obviously in a state of terror, asked how they could
follow the broadcast's advice and flee from the city, whether they would
be safer in the "gas raid" in the cellar or on the roof, how they could
safeguard their children, and many of the questions which had been
worrying residents of London and Paris during the tense days before the
Munich agreement.

So many calls came to newspapers and so many newspapers found it
advisable to check on the reports despite their fantastic content that
The Associated Press sent out the following at 8:48 P. M.:

"Note to Editors: Queries to newspapers from radio listeners throughout
the United States tonight, regarding a reported meteor fall which killed
a number of New Jerseyites, are the result of a studio dramatization.
The A. P."

Similarly police teletype systems carried notices to all stationhouses,
and police short-wave radio stations notified police radio cars that the
event was imaginary.

Message From the Police

The New York police sent out the following:

"To all receivers: Station WABC informs us that the broadcast just
concluded over that station was a dramatization of a play. No cause for
alarm."

The New Jersey State Police teletyped the following:

"Note to all receivers—WABC broadcast as drama re this section being
attacked by residents of Mars. Imaginary affair."

From one New York theatre a manager reported that a throng of playgoers
had rushed from his theatre as a result of the broadcast. He said that
the wives of two men in the audience, having heard the broadcast, called
the theatre and insisted that their husbands be paged. This spread the
"news" to others in the audience.

The switchboard of The New York Times was overwhelmed by the
calls. A total of 875 were received. One man who called from Dayton,
Ohio, asked, "What time will it be the end of the world?" A caller from
the suburbs said he had had a houseful of guests and all had rushed out
to the yard for safety.

Warren Dean, a member of the American Legion living in Manhattan, who
telephoned to verify the "reports," expressed indignation which was
typical of that of many callers.

"I've heard a lot of radio programs, but I've never heard anything as
rotten as that," Mr. Dean said. "It was too realistic for comfort.
They broke into a dance program with a news flash. Everybody in my
house was agitated by the news. It went on just like press radio news."

At 9 o'clock a woman walked into the West Forty-seventh Street police
station dragging two children, all carrying extra clothing. She said
she was ready to leave the city. Police persuaded her to stay.

A garbled version of the reports reached the Dixie Bus terminal, causing
officials there to prepare to change their schedule on confirmation of
"news" of an accident at Princeton on their New Jersey route. Miss
Dorothy Brown at the terminal sought verification, however, when the
caller refused to talk with the dispatcher, explaining to here that "the
world is coming to an end and I have a lot to do."

Harlem Shaken By the "News"

Harlem was shaken by the "news." Thirty men and women rushed into the
West 123d Street police station and twelve into the West 135th Street
station saying they had their household goods packed and were all ready
to leave Harlem if the police would tell them where to go to be
"evacuated." One man insisted he had heard "the President's voice" over
the radio advising all citizens to leave the cities.

The parlor churches in the Negro district, congregations of the smaller
sects meeting on the ground floors of brownstone houses, took the "news"
in stride as less faithful parishioners rushed in with it, seeking
spiritual consolation. Evening services became "end of the world"
prayer meetings in some.

One man ran into the Wadsworth Avenue Police Station in Washington
Heights, white with terror, crossing the Hudson River and asking what he
should do. A man came in to the West 152d Street Station, seeking
traffic directions. The broadcast became a rumor that spread through
the district and many persons stood on street corners hoping for a sight
of the "battle" in the skies.

In Queens the principal question asked of the switchboard operators at
Police Headquarters was whether "the wave of poison gas will reach as
far as Queens." Many said they were all packed up and ready to leave
Queens when told to do so.

Samuel Tishman of 100 Riverside Drive was one of the multitude that fled
into the street after hearing part of the program. He declared that
hundreds of persons evacuated their homes fearing that the "city was
being bombed."

"I came home at 9:15 P.M. just in time to receive a telephone call from
my nephew who was frantic with fear. He told me the city was about to
be bombed from the air and advised me to get out of the building at
once. I turned on the radio and heard the broadcast which corroborated
what my nephew had said, grabbed my hat and coat and a few personal
belongings and ran to the elevator. When I got to the street there were
hundreds of people milling around in panic. Most of us ran toward
Broadway and it was not until we stopped taxi drivers who had heard the
entire broadcast on their radios that we knew what it was all about. It
was the most asinine stunt I ever heard of."

"I heard that broadcast and almost had a heart attack," said Louis
Winkler of 1,322 Clay Avenue, the Bronx. "I didn’t tune it in until the
program was half over, but when I heard the names and titles of Federal,
State and municipal officials and when the 'Secretary of the Interior'
was introduced, I was convinced it was the McCoy. I ran out into the
street with scores of others, and found people running in all
directions. The whole thing came over as a news broadcast and in my
mind it was a pretty crummy thing to do."

The Telegraph Bureau switchboard at police headquarters in Manhattan,
operated by thirteen men, was so swamped with calls from apprehensive
citizens inquiring about the broadcast that police business was
seriously interfered with.

Headquarters, unable to reach the radio station by telephone, sent a
radio patrol car there to ascertain the reason for the reaction to the
program. When the explanation was given, a police message was sent to
all precincts in the five boroughs advising the commands of the cause.

"They're Bombing New Jersey!"

Patrolman John Morrison was on duty at the switchboard in the Bronx
Police Headquarters when, as he afterward expressed it, all the lines
became busy at once. Among the first who answered was a man who
informed him:

"They're bombing New Jersey!"

"How do you know?" Patrolman Morrison inquired.

"I heard it on the radio," the voice at the other end of the wire
replied. "Then I went to the roof and I could see the smoke from the
bombs, drifting over toward New York. What shall I do?"

The patrolman calmed the caller as well as he could, then answered other
inquiries from persons who wanted to know whether the reports of a
bombardment were true, and if so where they should take refuge.

At Brooklyn police headquarters, eight men assigned to the monitor
switchboard estimated that they had answered more than 800 inquiries
from persons who had been alarmed by the broadcast. A number of these,
the police said, came from motorists who had heard the program over
their car radios and were alarmed both for themselves and for persons at
their homes. Also, the Brooklyn police reported, a preponderance of the
calls seemed to come from women.

The National Broadcasting Company reported that men stationed at the WJZ
transmitting station at Bound Brook, N. J., had received dozens of calls
from residents of that area. The transmitting station communicated with
New York an passed the information that there was no cause for alarm to
the persons who inquired later.

Meanwhile the New York telephone operators of the company found their
switchboards swamped with incoming demands for information, although the
NBC system had no part in the program.

Record Westchester Calls

The State, county, parkway and local police in Westchester Counter were
swamped also with calls from terrified residents. Of the local police
departments, Mount Vernon, White Plains, Mount Kisco, Yonkers and
Tarrytown received most of the inquiries. At first the authorities
thought they were being made the victims of a practical joke, but when
the calls persisted and increased in volume they began to make
inquiries. The New York Telephone Company reported that it had never
handled so many calls in one hour in years in Westchester.

One man called the Mount Vernon Police Headquarters to find out "where
the forty policemen were killed"; another said he brother was ill in
bed listening to the broadcast and when he heard the reports he got into
an automobile and "disappeared." "I'm nearly crazy!" the caller
exclaimed.

Because some of the inmates took the catastrophic reports seriously as
they came over the radio, some of the hospitals and the county
penitentiary ordered that the radios be turned off.

Thousands of calls came in to Newark Police Headquarters. These were
not only from the terrorstricken. Hundreds of physicians and nurses,
believing the reports to be true, called to volunteer their services to
aid the "injured." City officials also called in to make "emergency"
arrangements for the population. Radio cars were stopped by the
panicky throughout that city.

Jersey City police headquarters received similar calls. One woman
asked detective Timothy Grooty, on duty there, "Shall I close my
windows?" A man asked, "Have the police any extra gas masks?" Many of
the callers, on being assured the reports were fiction, queried again
and again, uncertain in whom to believe.

Scores of persons in lower Newark Avenue, Jersey City, left their homes
and stood fearfully in the street, looking with apprehension toward the
sky. A radio car was dispatched there to reassure them.

The incident at Hedden Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, in Newark, one of
the most dramatic in the area, caused a tie-up in traffic for blocks
around. the more than twenty families there apparently believed the
"gas attack" had started, and so reported to the police. An ambulance,
three radio cars and a police emergency squad of eight men were sent to
the scene with full inhalator apparatus.

They found the families with wet cloths on faces contorted with
hysteria. The police calmed them, halted the those who were attempting
to move their furniture on their cars and after a time were able to
clear the traffic snarl.

At St. Michael's Hospital, High Street and Central Avenue, in the heart
of the Newark industrial district, fifteen men and women were treated
for shock and hysteria. In some cases it was necessary to give
sedatives, and nurses and physicians sat down and talked with the more
seriously affected.

While this was going on, three persons with children under treatment in
the institution telephoned that they were taking them out and leaving
the city, but their fears were calmed when hospital authorities
explained what had happened.

A flickering of electric lights in Bergen County from about 6:15 to 6:30
last evening provided a build-up for the terror that was to ensue when
the radio broadcast started.

Without going out entirely, the lights dimmed and brightened alternately
and radio reception was also affected. The Public Service Gas and
Electric Company was mystified by the behavior of the lights, declaring
there was nothing wrong at their power plants or in their distributing
system. A spokesman for the service department said a call was made to
Newark and the same situation was reported. He believed, he said, that
the condition was general throughout the State.

The New Jersey Bell Telephone Company reported that every central office
in the State was flooded with calls for more than an hour and the
company did not have time to summon emergency operators to relieve the
congestion. Hardest hit was the Trenton toll office, which handled
calls from all over the East.

One of the radio reports, the statement about the mobilization of 7,000
national guardsmen in New Jersey, caused the armories of the Sussex and
Essex troops to be swamped with calls from officers and men seeking
information about the mobilization place.

Prayers for Deliverance

In Caldwell, N. J., an excited parishioner ran into the First Baptist
Church during evening services and shouted that a meteor had fallen,
showering death and destruction, and that North Jersey was threatened.
The Rev. Thomas Thomas, the pastor quieted the congregation and all
prayed for deliverance from the "catastrophe."

East Orange police headquarters received more than 200 calls from
persons who wanted to know what to do to escape the "gas." Unaware of
the broadcast, the switchboard operator tried to telephone Newark, but
was unable to get the call through because the switchboard at Newark
headquarters was tied up. The mystery was not cleared up until a
teletype explanation had been received from Trenton.

More than 100 calls were received at Maplewood police headquarters and
during the excitement two families of motorists, residents of New York
City, arrived at the station to inquire how they were to get back to
their homes now that the Pulaski Skyway had been blown up.

The women and children were crying and it took some time for the police
to convince them that the catastrophe was fictitious. Many persons who
called Maplewood said their neighbors were packing their possessions and
preparing to leave for the country.

In Orange, N. J., an unidentified man rushed into the lobby of the Lido
Theatre, a neighborhood motion picture house, with the intention of
"warning" the audience that a meteor had fallen on Raymond Boulevard,
Newark, and was spreading poisonous gases. Skeptical, Al Hochberg,
manager of the theatre, prevented the man from entering the auditorium
of the theatre and then called the police. He was informed that the
radio broadcast was responsible for the man's alarm.

Emanuel Priola, bartender of a tavern at 442 Valley Road, West Orange,
closed the place, sending away six customers, in the middle of the
broadcast to "rescue" his wife and two children.

"At first I thought it was a lot of Buck Rogers stuff, but when a friend
telephoned me that general orders had been issued to evacuate every one
from the metropolitan area I put the customers out, closed the place and
started to drive home," he said.

William H. Decker of 20 Aubrey Road, Montclair, N. J., denounced the
broadcast as "a disgrace" and "an outrage," which he said had
frightened hundreds of residents in his community, including children.
He said he knew of one woman who ran into the street with her two
children and asked for the help of neighbors in saving them.

"We were sitting in the living room casually listening to the radio," he
said, "when we heard reports of a meteor falling near New Brunswick and
reports that gas was spreading. Then there was an announcement of the
Secretary of Interior from Washington who spoke of the happening as a
major disaster. It was the worst thing I ever heard over the air."

Columbia Explains Broadcast

The Columbia Broadcasting System issued a statement saying that the
adaptation of Mr. Wells's novel which was broadcast "followed the original
closely, but to make the imaginary details more interesting to American
listeners the adapter, Orson Welles, substituted an American locale for
the English scenes of the story."

Pointing out that the fictional character of the broadcast had been
announced four times and had been previously publicized, it continued:

"Nevertheless, the program apparently was produced with such vividness
that some listeners who may have heard only fragments thought the
broadcast was fact, not fiction. Hundreds of telephone calls reaching
CBS stations, city authorities, newspaper offices and police
headquarters in various cities testified to the mistaken belief.

"Naturally, it was neither Columbia's nor the Mercury Theatre's
intention to mislead any one, and when it became evident that a part of
the audience had been disturbed by the performance five announcements
were read over the network later in the evening to reassure those
listeners."

Expressing profound regret that his dramatic efforts should cause such
consternation, Mr. Welles said: "I don’t think we will choose anything
like this again." He hesitated about presenting it, he disclosed,
because "it was our thought that perhaps people might be bored or
annoyed at hearing a tale so improbable."

Scare Is Nationwide

Broadcast Spreads Fear In New England, the South and
West

Last night's radio "war scare" shocked thousands of men, women and
children in the big cities throughout the country. Newspaper offices,
police stations and radio stations were besieged with calls from anxious
relatives of New Jersey residents, and in some places anxious groups
discussed the impending menace of a disastrous war.

Most of the listeners who sought more information were widely confused
over the reports they had heard, and many were indignant when they
learned that fiction was the cause of their alarm.

In San Francisco the general impression of listeners seemed to be that
an overwhelming force had invaded the United States from the air, was in
the process of destroying New York and threatening to move westward.
"My God," roared one inquirer into a telephone, "where can I volunteer
my services? We've got to stop this awful thing."

Newspaper offices and radio stations in Chicago were swamped with
telephone calls about the "meteor" that had fallen in New Jersey. Some
said they had relatives in the "stricken area" and asked if the casualty
list was available.

In parts of St. Louis men and women clustered in the streets in
residential areas to discuss what they should do in the face of the
sudden war. One suburban resident drove fifteen miles to a newspaper
office to verify the radio "report."

In New Orleans a general impression prevailed that New Jersey had been
devastated by the "invaders," but fewer inquiries were received than in
other cities.

In Baltimore a woman engaged passage on an airliner for New York, where
her daughter is in school.

The Associated Press gathered the following reports of reaction to the
broadcast:

At Fayetteville, N. C., people with relatives in the section of New
Jersey where the mythical visitation had its locale went to a newspaper
office in tears, seeking information.

A message from Providence, R. I., said: "Weeping and hysterical women
swamped the switchboard of The Providence Journal for details of the
massacre and destruction at New York, and officials of the electric
company received scores of calls urging them to turn off all lights so
that the city would be safe from the enemy."

Mass hysteria mounted so high in some cases that people told the police
and newspapers they "saw" the invasion.

The Boston Globe told of one woman who claimed she could "see the fire,"
and said she and many others in her neighborhood were "getting out of
here."

Minneapolis and St. Paul police switchboards were deluged with calls
from frightened people.

The Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Va., reported some of their telephone
calls from people who said they were "praying."

The Kansas City bureau of The Associated Press received inquiries on the
"meteors" from Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Beaumont, Texas, and St.
Joseph, Mo., in addition to having its local switchboards flooded with
calls. One telephone informant said he had loaded all his children into
his car, had filled it with gasoline, and was going somewhere. "Where
is it safe?" he wanted to know.

Atlanta reported that listeners throughout the Southeast "had it that a
planet struck in New Jersey, with monsters and almost everything and
anywhere from 40 to 7,000 people reported killed." Editors said
responsible persons, known to them, were among the anxious information
seekers.

In Birmingham, Ala., people gathered in groups and prayed, and Memphis
had its full quota of weeping women calling in to learn the facts.

In Indianapolis a woman ran into a church screaming: "New York
destroyed; it's the end of the world. You might as well go home to die.
I just heard it on the radio." Services were dismissed immediately.

Five students at Brevard College, N. C., fainted and panic gripped the
campus for a half hour with many students fighting for telephones to ask
their parents to come and get them.

A man in Pittsburgh said he returned home in the midst of the broadcast
and found his wife in the bathroom, a bottle of poison in her hand, and
screaming: "I'd rather die this way than like that."

He calmed her, listened to the broadcast and then rushed to a telephone
to get an explanation.

Officials of station CFRB, Toronto, said they never had had so many
inquiries regarding a single broadcast, the Canadian Press reported.

Washington May Act

Review of Broadcast by the Federal Commission Possible

SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30.—Informed of the furor created tonight by the
broadcasting of Wells drama, "War of the Worlds," officials of the
Federal Communications Commission indicated that the commission might
review the broadcast.

The usual practice of the commission is not to investigate broadcasts
unless formal demands for an inquiry are made, but the commission has
the power, officials pointed out, to initiate proceedings where the
public interest seems to warrant official action.

Geologists at Princeton Hunt 'Meteor' in Vain

SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

PRINCETON, N. J., Oct 30.—Scholastic calm deserted Princeton University
briefly tonight following widespread misunderstanding of the WABC radio
program announcing the arrival of Martians to subdue the earth.

Dr. Arthur F. Buddington, chairman of the Department of Geology, and Dr.
Harry Hess, Professor of Geology, received the first alarming reports in
a form indicating that a meteor had fallen near Dutch Neck, some five
miles away. They armed themselves with the necessary equipment and set
out to find a specimen. All they found was a group of sightseers,
searching like themselves for the meteor.

At least a dozen students received telephone calls from their parents,
alarmed by the broadcast. The Daily Princetonian, campus newspaper,
received numerous calls from students and alumni.

Mars Monsters Broadcast Will Not Be Repeated

Perpetrators of the Innovation Regret Causing of Public Alarm

WASHINGTON (AP) The radio industry viewed a hobgoblin more terrifying
to it than any Halloween spook. The prospect of increasing federal
control of broadcasts was discussed here as an aftermath of a radio
presentation of an H. G. Wells' imaginative story which caused many
listeners to believe that men from Mars had invaded the United States
with death rays.

When reports of terror that accompanied the fantastic drama reached the
communications commission there was a growing feeling that "something
should be done about it." Commission officials explained that the law
conferred upon it no general regulatory power over broadcasts. Certain
specific offenses, such as obscenity, are forbidden, and the commission
has the right to refuse license renewal to any station which has not
been operating "in the public interest." All station licenses must be
renewed every six months.

Within the commission there has developed strong opposition to using the
public interest clause to impose restrictions upon programs.
commissioner T. A. M. Craven has been particularly outspoken against
anything resembling censorship and he repeated his warning that the
commission should make no attempt at "censoring what shall or shall not
be said over the radio."

"The public does not want a spineless radio," he said.

Objection to Terrorism.

Commissioner George Henry Payne recalled that last November he had
protested against broadcasts that "produced terrorism and nightmares
among children" and said that for two years he had urged that there be a
"standard of broadcasts."

Saying that radio is an entirely different medium from the theater or
lecture platform, Payne added: "People who have material broadcast into
their homes without warnings have a right to protection. Too many
broadcasters have insisted that they could broadcast anything they
liked, contending that they were protected by the prohibition of
censorship. Certainly when people are injured morally, physically,
spiritually and psychically, they have just as much right to complain as
if the laws against obscenity and indecency were violated."

The commission called upon Columbia Broadcasting system, which presented
the fantasy, to submit a transcript and electrical recording of it.
None of the commissioners who could be reached for comment had heard the
program.

The broadcasters themselves were quick to give assurances that the
technique used in the program would not be repeated. Orson Welles, who
adapted "The War of the worlds," expressed his regrets.

Told Story Imaginative.

The Columbia network called attention to the fact that on Sunday night
it assured its listeners the story was wholly imaginary, and W. B.
Lewis, its vice president in charge of programs, said: "In order that
this may not happen again, the program department hereafter will not use
the technique of a stimulated news broadcast within a dramatization when
the circumstances of the broadcast could cause immediate alarm to
numbers of listeners."

The National Association of Broadcasters, through its president, Neville
Miller, expressed formal regret for the misinterpretation of the
program. "This instance emphasizes the responsibility we assume in the
use of radio and renews our determination to fulfill to the highest
degree our obligation to the public," Miller said. "I know that the
Columbia Broadcasting system and those of us in radio have only the most
profound regret that the composure of many of our fellow citizens was
disturbed by the vivid Orson Welles broadcast. The Columbia
Broadcasting system has taken immediate steps to insure that such
program technique will not be used again."

Chairman Frank R. McNinch, of the communications commission, declaring
that he would withhold judgment of the program until later, said: "The
widespread public reaction to this broadcast, as indicated by the press,
is another demonstration of the power and force of radio and points out
again the serious responsibility of those who are licensed to operate
stations."

Demand Investigation.

NEW YORK (AP). Urgent demands for federal investigation multiplied
in the wake of the ultra-realistic radio drama that spread mass
hysteria among listeners across the nation with its "news broadcast"
fantasy of octopus-like monsters from Mars invading the United States
and annihilating cities and populaces with a lethal "heat ray."

While officials at the Harvard astronomical observatory calmed fears of
such a conquest by space devouring hordes from another planet with the
wry comment that there was no evidence of higher life existing on
Mars—some 40,000,000 miles distant—local and federal officials acted
to prevent a repetition of such a nightmarish episode.

As for the 22 year old "man from Mars" himself, Orson Welles, youthful
actor manager and theatrical prodigy, whose vivid dramatization of H. G.
Wells' imaginative "The War of the Worlds" jumped the pulse beat of
radio listeners, declared himself "just stunned" by the reaction.
"Everything seems like a dream," he said.

The Columbia Broadcasting system whose network sent the spine chilling
dramatization into millions of homes issued a statement expressing
"regrets" and announced that hereafter it would not use the "technique
of a simulated news broadcast" which might "cause immediate alarm" among
listeners.

Military Lesson Taught.

WASHINGTON (AP). Military experts here foresee, in time of war, radio
loudspeakers in every public square in the United States and a system of
voluntary self-regulation of radio. This is the lesson they draw from
Sunday night's drama about an invasion by men from Mars armed with death
rays.

What struck the military listeners most about the radio play was its
immediate emotional effect. Thousands of persons believed a real
invasion had been unleashed. They exhibited all the symptoms of fear,
panic, determination to resist, desperation, bravery, excitement or
fatalism that real war would have produced. Military men declare that
such widespread reactions shows the government will have to insist on
the close co-operation of radio in any future war.

The experts believe this could be accomplished by voluntary agreement
among the radio stations to refrain from over-dramatizing war
announcements which would react on the public like Sunday night's
fictional announcement. They recall that the newspapers adopted
voluntary self-regulation during the World war and worked in close
co-operation with the government.

Moreover, since radio admittedly has so immediate an effect, the experts
believe every person in the United States will have to be given
facilities for listening in if war ever comes. Consequently radios with
loud speakers will have to be installed in all public squares, large and
small. Persons not having radios in their homes can listen in through
those.

Canada to Take No Action.

TORONTO (Canadian Press). Gordon Conant, attorney general of Ontario,
said his department did not plan action over the broadcast of a
realistic radio drama which, emanating from the United States and
re-broadcast here, caused widespread alarm. "I don’t know of any action
we could take," Conant said. "The difficulty is that only after these
things happen can it be decided that they are not in the public
interest. It is certainly not in the public interest that such
broadcasts should be allowed."

Radio Chain Heads Called

Broadcast Problem Raised by the Welles Program.

WASHINGTON (INS). Presidents of the nation's three major broadcasting
chains were invited by Chairman Frank R. McNinch, of the federal
communications commission, to a conference here late next week to
discuss the use of the newspaper term "flash" on radio programs.
McNinch issued the invitations to the presidents of the National
Broadcasting company, the Columbia Broadcasting company and the Mutual
Broadcasting system, he said, to discuss "especially the frequent and,
at times, misleading use of the newspaper term 'flash.'"

This step was taken by the FCC chairman in connection with last Sunday
night's broadcast, "The War of the Worlds." The word "flash" was used
in the broadcast to dramatize the H. G. Wells' imaginative story of an
attack on this planet by "monsters from Mars." Many protests were
received by the commission against the broadcast. The commission will
meet in secret session next week to listen to a reproduction of the
dramatization as recorded on discs. The conference with the radio chain
chieftains will follow.

In announcing the conference, McNinch said: "I have heard the opinion
often expressed within the industry as well as outside that the practice
of using 'flash,' as well as 'bulletin,' is overworked and results in
misleading the public. It is hoped and believed that a discussion on
this subject may lead to a clearer differentiation between bonafide news
matter of first rank importance and that which is of only ordinary
importance or which finds place in dramatics or advertising."

Book Excerpts, by Prof. David L. Miller

David L. Miller, a professor of sociology at Western Illinois
University, has given me permission to include some excerpts from his
recently published book, "Introduction to Collective Behavior and
Collective Action" (Waveland Publishing, Inc. (2000), ISBN
1-57766-105-2). The book devotes several pages to a discussion of the
War of the Worlds broadcast, which Miller says has been a
"sociological hobby" of his for nearly 30 years. Miller believes (and
says he is not original in this view) that "in the days following the
broadcast, the print media greatly exaggerated the nationwide
reaction. In part, this was because it was a darn good story, but
also because the print media were greatly concerned with the degree
to which radio was cutting into their preserve of reporting the
news."

CHAPTER 5
MASS HYSTERIA

Hadley Cantril's (1966) study of the War of the Worlds broadcast and
Donald M. Johnson's (1945) study of the Phantom Anesthetist are
considered to be classic studies of mass hysteria. [...]

Probably the most widely known event to be generally considered a
mass hysteria occurred on Sunday evening, October 30, 1938. Orson
Welles and his CBS Mercury Theater group presented an adaptation of
one of H. G. Welles's then lesser-known short stories, "The War of
the Worlds," which described a nineteenth-century Martian invasion of
England. The Mercury Theater adaptation was set in the present (1938)
and took place in the United States. Perhaps Welles's most
consequential decision was to use an "open format" during the first
half of the show. Instead of using the conventional dramatic format
of background music, narration, and dialogue, the first announcements
of the Martian invasion took the form of simulated news bulletins,
interrupting a program of dance music. Welles's second most
consequential decision was to use the names of actual New Jersey and
New York towns, highways, streets, and buildings when describing the
movements and attacks of the Martians.

These two decisions, plus the fact that most listeners tuned in eight
to twelve minutes late and therefore missed the Mercury Theater theme
and introduction, set the stage for what was to follow. Thousands of
people across the United States assumed they were listening to real
news bulletins and public announcements. A substantial portion of
these listeners became very frightened and attempted to call police,
the National Guards, hospitals, newspapers, and radio stations for
information. In addition, people tried to contact family members,
friends, and neighbors. By the time Mercury Theater's first station
break came, informing people they were listening to a CBS radio
drama, most of the broadcast's damage had been done.

The next day, newspapers across the country carried stories of
terrorized people hiding in basements, panic flight from New Jersey
and New York, stampedes in theaters, heart attacks, miscarriages, and
even suicides. During the months that followed, these stories were
shown to have little if any substance, yet today the myth of War of
the Worlds stampedes and suicides persists as part of American
folklore. One clear and certain result of the broadcast, however, was
a number of Federal Communication Commission regulations, issued
within weeks of the broadcast, prohibiting the use of the open format
in radio drama. [...]

Cantril's (1966) study of "The War of the Worlds" broadcast concludes
that about 20 percent of those listening to all or part of the
broadcast exhibited hysterical panic reactions. [...]

Without question, listeners were frightened by the War of the Worlds
broadcast; Mattoon residents were convinced their dizziness and
nausea were caused by the phantom's gas; workers were hospitalized
for days with rashes, rapid heart beat, and nausea during the June
bug epidemic; and farmers were convinced their cattle had died in a
mysterious manner. Those who studied these events from the standpoint
of mass hysteria described these reactions as psychogenic or mass
sociogenic illness. In other words, from the standpoint of mass
hysteria, fear reactions to the War of the Worlds broadcast were
abnormally severe, given the nature of the show. Likewise, it was
concluded that the physical symptoms reported in the Riverside
emergency room, during the Stairway of the Stars concert, and during
the phantom anesthetist and June bug episodes had no organic cause.
It was also concluded that the mysterious cattle mutilations were
either totally imaginary or the work of scavengers combined with
normal decomposition. [...]

The weakness of the psychogenic explanation is perhaps most obvious
when we consider the reactions to the War of the Worlds broadcast.
Again, we should emphasize that the War of the Worlds was not an
ordinary radio drama. As mentioned above, the first half of the show
used an open format in which the entire story line was developed
through the use of simulated news bulletins and on-the-scene reports.
The second half of the show used a conventional dramatic format. Many
discussions of the War of the Worlds read as if listeners panicked at
the very beginning of the broadcast and remained terrorized
throughout the show and much of the evening. In fact, a ten-minute
segment in the first half of the broadcast caused most of the
trouble.

In the days following the show, newspaper columnists and public
officials expressed dismay at the "incredible stupidity,"
"gullibility," and "hysteria" of listeners. Many popular accounts
claim that the broadcast was interrupted several times for special
announcements that a play was in progress. Listeners, however, had
apparently been too panicked to notice them. These extreme
psychogenic assumptions are, for the most part, unwarranted and
inaccurate. For example, other than Mercury Theater's one-minute
introduction (which most listeners missed), the station break at the
middle of the broadcast, and the signoff, there were no
announcements, special or otherwise, to indicate that a play was on
the air. Further, Mercury Theater was being presented by CBS as a
public service broadcast, and there were no commercials from which
listeners might conclude that they were listening to a drama
(Houseman 1948).

Cantril (1966) and Houseman (1948) indicate that most listeners, and
virtually all of those who became frightened, tuned in Mercury
Theater about twelve minutes after it began. These listeners joined
the broadcast during an on-the-scene news report from a farm near
Grovers Mill, New Jersey-an actual town located between Princeton and
Trenton-where a large meteor had landed. Welles's careful direction
meticulously created all the character of a remote broadcast,
including static and microphone feedback and background sounds of
autos, sirens, and the voices of spectators and police.

Twelve minutes from the beginning of Mercury Theater newscaster Carl
Phillips (played by radio actor Frank Readick) was concluding a
rather awkward interview with a Mr. Wilmuth, the owner of the farm
where the meteor had landed. Phillips broke off his interview with
the annoyingly inarticulate Mr. Wilmuth by providing listeners with a
detailed description of the meteor. During this description, Phillips
called the listeners' attention to mysterious sounds coming from the
meteor, and fought to maintain his composure as he described the
incredible and horrible creatures emerging from the pit where the
meteor had landed. Background sounds of angry police and confused,
frightened, and milling spectators provided a brilliant counterpoint
to Phillips's stammering narration. At this point, Phillips signed
off temporarily to "take up a safer position" from which to continue
the broadcast.

For what seemed a very long time, a studio piano played "Clair de
Lune," filling in the empty airspace. Finally, an anonymous studio
announcer broke in with, "We are bringing you an eyewitness account
of what's happening on the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey."
After more empty airspace, Carl Phillips returned. Apparently unsure
of whether he was on the air, Phillips continued to describe the
monsters. The tempo of his reporting increased until Phillips was
almost incoherent. In the background, the sound of terrified voices,
screams, and the monsters' strange fire weapon merged into a chaotic
and hair-raising din. Then, abruptly, there was dead silence. After
an unbearably long period of empty airspace, the studio announcer
broke in with, "Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our
control, we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grovers Mill.
Evidently there is some difficulty in our field transmission"
(Cantril 1966:17-18). This segment of the broadcast lasted less than
five minutes, but, according to later interviews, it caused most of
the fright.

The technical brilliance of the broadcast aside, how could an event
as seemingly unlikely as a Martian invasion be readily interpreted as
real? Part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that the
monsters were never clearly identified as Martians until several
minutes after Carl Phillips's segment of the broadcast. It is likely
that some people who became confused and frightened was Frank
Readick's interpretation of an on-the-scene news reporter. Readick
was inspired by the eyewitness description of the explosion of the
zeppelin Hindenburg, which had occurred on May 6, 1937, at Lakehurst,
New Jersey. In this world-famous broadcast, the reporter was
describing the uneventful landing of the Hindenburg when it suddenly
exploded with spectacular and deadly force. The reporter struggled to
remain coherent, and his tearful, second-by-second description was
heard by millions. The day of the War of the Worlds broadcast,
Readick spent hours listening to the Hindenburg recording (Houseman
1948). His interpretation of the Martian attack created a sense of
deja vu. The emotion, the stammering, and even the tempo of Carl
Phillips's narration reminds one of the Hindenburg disaster. Frank
Readick's blending of the real and imaginary must have been very
disconcerting for those who had heard the Hindenburg broadcast
eighteen months earlier.

After Carl Phillips's "death" and until the first station break, the
broadcast consisted of a collage of news bulletins, public
announcements, and on-the-scene reports. Taken sequentially, these
bulletins and reports seemed to describe the Martians' utter
destruction of the New Jersey National Guard, a devastating Martian
advance across New Jersey, and, by the end of the first half of the
show, massive nerve gas attacks on New York City. Events of such
magnitude could hardly occur in a period of less than fifteen
minutes. About 25 percent of the listeners who had become frightened
quickly concluded that they were listening to a radio drama because
of this time distortion and other internal inconsistencies of the
broadcast (Cantril 1966:106-107).

Most of the frightened listeners did not perceive the impossibility
of a fifteen-minute sweep of the East Coast by Martians. Cantril
describes these people as experiencing the most severe symptoms of
panic: their critical abilities had been so swept away that they
continued to believe the impossible. Cantril's data, however, suggest
an alternate interpretation of this group's behavior. Quite simply,
many of Cantril's interviews suggest that listeners perceived the
reported events as occurring simultaneously rather than sequentially.
Nothing in the first part of the broadcast definitely stated that the
Martians who had landed at Grovers Mill were the same Martians who,
moments later, were reported to be marching across New Jersey or
attacking New York City. Listeners who failed to perceive a time
distortion in the broadcast had not necessarily lost their critical
abilities. Rather, they were perceiving the news bulletins and
on-the-scene reports as an understandably confusing and disordered
collage of information pouring in simultaneously from all across the
nation.

The psychogenic, or hysteria, explanation of people's reactions to
the War of the Worlds broadcast severely underplays the unique and
unsettling character of the show. Cantril poses the question: "Why
did this broadcast frighten some people when other fantastic
broadcasts do not?" He provides a partial answer when he considers
the realistic way in which the program was put together (Cantril
1966:67-76). Houseman (1948) provides even more insight when he
discusses the "technical brilliance" of the show that emerged under
Orson Welles's direction. If we take into account the unique
character of the War of the Worlds broadcast, we needn’t speculate
that psychogenic mechanisms caused people to lose their critical
ability and then to panic. Rather, Orson Welles and his Mercury
Theater staff of excellent writers and actors not so innocently
conspired to "scare the hell out of people" for Halloween. They
succeeded in scaring the hell out of 20 percent of their listening
audience.

In summary, the quantitative mass hysteria studies fail to show that
the unusual and unverified experiences are widespread. In some
instances, these experiences are reported by a very small portion of
an available population, and in no instance are they reported by a
majority. The quantitative studies also fail to clearly substantiate
the hysterical nature of unusual and unverified experiences. Some
studies have relied almost totally on the judgment of law enforcement
or medical authorities that the reported experiences are of a
hysterical nature. Cantril, on the other hand, fails to take the
unique features of the War of the Worlds broadcast into account when
he concludes that the fear reactions were hysterical in nature.

Mass hysteria studies generally fail to distinguish mobilization as a
distinct element of the episodes that prompted the investigations.
Cantril, for example, alleges that panic flight occurred during the
War of the Worlds broadcast but does not systematically examine his
data to determine the extent or characteristics of this flight.
Cantril also notes that telephone switchboards at CBS, local radio
stations, police, and hospitals were flooded with calls from
hysterical people. Again he made no systematic attempts to ascertain
the nature of these calls. Likewise, Johnson (1945) noted that
Mattoon residents formed neighborhood patrols during the anesthetist
incident, but he did not attempt to find out when these patrols
occurred or determine their size, composition, and activities. Such
types of mobilization are probably more burdensome to authorities and
disruptive of social routines than are the unusual and unverified
experiences.

Even though the mass hysteria studies fail to systematically examine
mobilization, they do present information that, when carefully
considered, provides some insight into this process. Though Cantril's
data does not document the claim that the War of the Worlds broadcast
produced substantial amounts of panic flight, a few of his interviews
suggest that some people started to pack belongings in preparation
for movement before they found out the news bulletins were a play. In
only one instance, however, does Cantril (1966:54) discuss a person
attempting to get away from the Martian attack, without regard for
future consequences. Cantril received a letter from a man who spent
$3.25 of his meager savings to buy a ticket to "go away." After the
man found out it was a play, the letter continued, he realized he no
longer had enough money to buy a pair of workshoes. The last part of
the letter contained a request for size 9B workshoes. Houseman
(1948:82) reports that Mercury Theater received a similar request for
size 9B workshoes which they sent in spite of their lawyers'
misgivings. The story of the man who decided to forgo workshoes in
order to escape the Martians has a decided ring of the apocryphal.

Rick Keating

I've been meaning to bring this up since Oct. 30, but I've been busy. When I
listened to "War of the Worlds" on Oct. 30, I decided to page through a book
I own called The War of the Worlds: Mars' Invasion of Earth, inciting panic
and inspiring terror from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles and Beyond by
Sourcebooks MediaFusion. In doing so, I saw that the book, which I hadn’t
looked at in some time, contained the script for the radio show. So I decided
to follow along for a bit.

And I noticed some differences between the script and the broadcast. The
first instance I made note of sounds like there's a fault in the original
transcription disc. It's the part where Professor Pierson says "I look down
at my blackened hands, my torn shoes, my tattered clothes..." I own six
copies of the "War of the Worlds" broadcast on both tape and CD, and a quick
check of three of them, the Radio Reruns tape, the CD version that came with
the book, and the CD in the collection "Radio Tune in the Golden Age: The
Classic Collection", all had a "skip", if you will, after "blackened hands",
jumping to "and I try to connect them with a professor who lives at
Princeton." And I don’t remember ever hearing the lines about torn shoes and
tattered clothes (whether hearing the show over the radio or on tape or CD),
so I'm guessing my other three copies-- and all other copies-- of the episode
are all missing those few words. Or does anyone have a copy that
doesn’t skip over that small bit?

The second instance I noted comes not long after, as Professor Pierson
reflects on how strange it is to be back in his study, life returned to
normal. After describing how strange it is to be writing this last chapter in
his study, Pierson says, "Strange to see the University spires dim and blue
through an April haze. Strange to watch children playing in the streets." The
three copies I checked are all missing that first sentence, and there's no
"skip", as there was in the earlier example. Nor do I remember ever hearing
the line about the university spires. Does anyone have a copy of the
broadcast with that sentence about the university spires? If not, then it
could be that the Welles and/or the cast made some last minute edits to the
script and cut that line before broadcast. On the other hand, if people do
have copies of the broadcast with that sentence included, it suggests later
edits done, perhaps, as someone suggested in an earlier digest, to make
room for commercials when "The War of the Worlds" was aired on some station
around Halloween.

I'm pretty sure there's one or two earlier examples of the broadcast
differing from the script, but I didn’t mark those pages in the book that
day. In any event, as I said, I don’t recall ever hearing those missing bits
I described above. But I was curious whether anyone had, in either case. In
any event, it might tell me whether I have later generation recordings.

While I've never listened to all six copies one after the other, I have heard
the story so many times that if there were any major differences, I'd have
noticed it at the time and made note of it in my Radioshows database. So I'm
guessing that were I to undertake such a task, I'd only notice various
degrees of surface noise, improvements in sound quality, etc.

The other three copies I own, for the record, are included in the collections
"Old Time Radio Science Fiction" (Smithsonian Collection) and "The Greatest
Old Time Radio of the 20th Century" and a tape from "The World's Greatest Old
Time Radio Shows."

For what it's worth, I don’t believe there's a second version, and whenever
I've heard the episode, whether over the radio or on tape or CD, it's always
been Ramon Raquello, never anyone else.

Michael Biel

While listening to the classic "War of the Worlds" tonight a question
occurred to me: When was the first time this program was
rebroadcast?

This question is complicated because there are two ways this program
can be "rebroadcast." One is by replaying the recording of the
original, and the other is by doing a new broadcast of the original
story.

In the first instance—rebroadcasting the original recording—there
are two necessary factors. One is having the recording itself, and
the other is the interest in rebroadcasting OTR in general. Until an
incomplete version was released on Audio Rarities LPA 2355 in 1955 by
Sidney Frey of Dauntless International, a recording of the original
broadcast was not generally available. And during those years of the
decline of radio drama's popularity it was not yet "hip" to be
nostalgic about the golden age of radio. That didn’t come until about
ten years later, around 1965 and 1966. It is probable that a few
stations might have played the recording during those years. I was
listening to OTR on Sunday nights on WVNJ Newark, and Dave Golden was
making occasional appearances on WBAI, New York. They might have done
it. An obvious time would have been the 30th anniversary in 1968, but
on that night something else happened.

Rock station WKBW, Buffalo, New York did an altogether new version of
the story in their top-40 radio style using their own DJs and news
department personnel on Oct 30, 1968. It is one hell of a
performance, and it beats the Orson Wells original hands down. It is
far more convincing, and is more consistent with contemporary 1968
radio than the original had been to 1938 radio. And the ending is
different—not altogether a conclusive finish nor a happy ending.

The following year they rebroadcast the tape and in the preface they
described what had happened the previous year. They had done a lot
of promotion of the program and had sent press releases and info to
all of the public service agencies that might be affected, such as
police, fire, civil defense, etc. Yet some of these agencies reacted
to the bulletins in spite of having been given prior notice of what
was being done. And they even got calls from listeners LISTENING TO
THE BROADCAST asking when the broadcast was going to begin. That is
how smoothly the style of the broadcast blended in with the everyday
style of the station. They played records, did commercials, played
their jingles, and covered the story like they regularly covered
stories. It is a masterpiece.

On a similar note, back around 1950 a station in Caracas, Venezuela
likewise did an updated localized version and it was so effective a
mob burned the station down when they discovered it was a hoax. Some
station personnel died. There is a well researched article about
this on a web site. (Anybody have its URL? The author was on the
other OTRlist.)

Conversely, National Public Radio did a "public radio" version on the
50th anniversary in 1988 that in my opinion stinks to high heaven.
With a script modified by the original author Howard Koch, and using
a highly overrated cast and sound effects done by Lucas' Skywalker
Ranch personnel led by Randy Thom, it is extraordinarily unconvincing
and dull presentation. I don’t recall hearing anything about NPR
making it available for rebroadcast ever since, and I hope that this
sham remains buried. They made it available for a limited time as a
cassette and a one-track CD. Those dunderheads didn’t even have the
common sense to put in cue points for different scenes as tracks on
the CD. (Unfortunately they are not the only idiots who put out CDs
like that.)

There's one other factor about rebroadcasting the original 1938
program. The complete recording that we now have was not circulated
until around 1971. I had been given a tape of it—complete with
surface noise during the station break—about a year before the LP
first came out, so it was available to a select few, but I don’t
recall hearing it on the air until after the Evolution LP was issued.

I've mentioned before that I have a tape of the original War of the Worlds
discs that includes the full length of the mid-program station break. This
was edited out of the recording when the LPs of it were released, but my
tape, which I obtained a year or so before the LPs came out, includes the
silence and the slight surface noise of the original disc.

I came across the tape this evening, and here is the all-important piece of
information. The station break was twenty seconds long. So, if you are
concerned about the accuracy of the timing of the recording you have, add
twenty seconds to it to determine what the total length of the program was.
It should be around 59:00 to 59:15 I suppose. I am not sure of what the
length of a CBS hourly station break was in 1938.

Chris Holm noted that someone had cast doubts on the WOTW recording, saying
it was a re-creation done the following week. I doubt that because that
would be evident in the cast call sheets for the following week, since there
would have been some different members and effects people needed for the two
different programs. There IS a possibility that it is the rehearsal
recording because there have been statements that the rehearsals of Mercury
Theatre were listened to before the final airings. But I tend to doubt even
this possibility. What I CAN tell you is this: The recording we know was
credited to Manheim Fox when it was first issued on LP in the late 60s. The
year before that first LP issue of this version, I was given a tape of
this recording that includes surface noise for thirty seconds after the ID
break announcement and before the re-join announcement. There is silence
for 30 seconds—only surface noise. Thus, this is a line check recording.
No other recording of these discs includes that break. I doubt that a
re-creation the week after would have kept in the break at 30 seconds
length. While a rehearsal might have done so to keep the timing exact, I
also think that a rehearsal might have broken for a time-out break at that
point, to relax, go over notes, and to regroup.

In the 1950s, Sydney Frey issued an incomplete recording on Audio Rarities.
The opening, closing, ID break announcements, and one other section are
missing. The sound quality and surface noise are quite different. However,
there is no doubt whatsoever that it is of the same performance. Although I
have been in touch with Frey's daughter, I do not know if the original discs
are still in her files. I also have a story of how this set might have been
come to have been recorded and how her father might have gotten them. No
confirmation from her as she was too young then to be involved.

In a recent newspaper article about the CBS News Archive, there is a
photograph of the archivist holding a yellow-labeled 16-inch disc that the
caption says is the WOTH. I can tell you that this was not in the disc
collection of CBS News when I saw the collection in the early 70s. Its the
first thing I looked for. The entertainment division had a different
archive that I have never been able to crack, and the discs might have been
there. I and another digest member had been offered a set of WOTW discs at
separate times, and both of us noted that the discs were dated as being a
1948 dub. I seem to recall a scan of yellow labels. Maybe that is what CBS
now has. In the 1970s I was told by a man who had later become a
supervising engineer at CBS that when he was new at CBS he had actually been
the one to cut the discs of the program at CBS and had been ordered to
smuggle the discs out of CBS. He told me that they were later lost, I
think, when his kid brought them in to school for show-and-tell. A few
years earlier I was shown a set of 12-inch lacquers in the possession of a
very famous collector of a genre other than OTR. Did he get them at
school?? But on the other hand, I was specifically told by another
long-time CBS engineer who used to be a digester member that CBS New York
never had any disc cutting equipment, just like CBS Hollywood never had any
either. Yet my other source said he was there when a pair of disc cutters
was installed at 485 Madison Ave.in September 1938 in time for the Munich
Crisis.

Is this starting to read like The DaVinci Code? I have been asked to be on
a WOTW panel for next years FOTR. It has been my intention to try to follow
up these leads. Wish me luck. And by the way, does anybody have any
contact with Manny Fox? Is he still alive? Can someone confirm that he is
not Sonny Fox?

Bill Jaker reported that WSKG was going to do a live recreation of WOTW with
an audience and live music. I found out this morning (also too late to
listen) that Ball State University in Indiana also did a live production with
an audience and live music Thursday night. And while Bill says there will be
someone there who had heard the original, Ball State says there will be
someone at their production who had been in the CBS Building at the time of
the broadcast.

Bill also said:

There's been concern expressed here on the Digest and elsewhere about
some re-enactments turning campy, shifting the scene out of New Jersey
to the local area or just not getting it right." I suppose that we could
put the 1988 NPR version in that category, since I don’t think it was very
effective. Doing a "re-creation" of how it was done in 1938 will not have
any effect, nor will just a minor update as NPR did in 1988. But it CAN be
effective if the script is thrown out the window and a complete update to
modern style is done.

Last week I did a presentation at both FOTR and at the NYC branch of the
Assoc for Recorded Sound Collections about WOTW and MacLiesh's "Air Raid"
which had been broadcast by CBS three days before WOTW with some of the same
cast members. In addition to playing some segments of "Air Raid" (one
generation away from the original 78 discs) and playing the middle break of
WOTW complete with the previously unheard 20 seconds of surface noise where a
station ID would have been inserted, I also discussed four other later
productions of WOTW which had updated and changed the location to that of
their local area to great effect. They were Santiago, Chile in 1944, Braga,
Spain on Oct 30, 1988, WKBW Buffalo NY on Oct 30, 1968, and Quito, Ecuador on
Feb 12, 1949. While there were some fright and outrage in the first three of
these, in Quito the outraged mob stormed the radio station and BURNED IT
DOWN, killing between 6 and 20 people. You can look up info on the web on
these, but I played some segments of the WKBW broadcast that are not on their
website. I have an aircheck of the 1969 repeat which I am not sure they even
know about. One of my students had recorded it off the air in New Jersey, so
there is fading once in a while. Here the update to the 1968 sound of The
Big KB is VERY effective, much more than any other I have heard. I had a lot
of people ask me where the complete broadcast is available, and it isn’t yet
until I can locate the tapes which got moved from my office in the past few
months. I'll post here when I have found it and have it ready.

Elizabeth McLeod

I know this was brought up one or two years ago on the OTR Digest, but I
have forgotten the answer. What were MBS and NBC Blue airing at 8pm EST
on October 30th, 1938?

Those Mutual stations that hadn’t sold the time period locally had the
option of carrying a sustaining musical program presented by the WOR
Symphony under the direction of Alfred Wallerstien. A major chunk of
Mutual did not carry this broadcast—the Colonial Network in New
England carried Father Coughlin's paid program instead.

Blue stations were offered another sustaining program, "Out of the West,"
a musical feature from San Francisco with Ernest Gill and his Orchestra,
which they could carry if they hadn’t sold the time locally.

Given that the Chase & Sanborn Hour was, according to Hooper, the most
popular program on the air during the fall of 1938, it's not surprising
that the Sunday-night-at-8 timeslot was essentially a throwaway period
for the other networks—or, in the case of CBS, a chance to turn
unsalable time into a public-relations writeoff by positioning itself as
a "Patron of the Arts." An hour-long drama series based primarily on
public-domain works, cast with actors working for scale, was a low-budget
way for the network to eat a timeslot no one wanted, and the fact that
Welles happened at that time to be the darling of the New York
Intellectual crowd enabled CBS to look good while doing it. Of course, no
one was counting on the sort of publicity they ended up getting....

Does anyone know what we're listening to as far as
the original "War Of The Worlds" broadcast? Are they
all copies of copies of copies? Is there a single
original transcription disc?

There are apparently several sets of copy discs extant, with at least one
set known to have been dubbed at Radio Recorders in Hollywood in
1948—a set evidently dubbed onto 16" blanks from 12" 78rpm copy discs, making
it probably third generation at best. Copy discs are not originals, do
not sound like originals, and should not be considered originals—and
certainly shouldn’t bring the price of originals.

However, a set of WOTW discs was auctioned off last year by the estate of
Ralph Murchow, a prominent collector of radios and radio equipment for
$14,000—and while I've never seen any positive authentication for
these discs, it appears from a picture online
(http://www.estesauctions.com/muchowpictures.html) that these could be
originals. The discs appear to be Presto Green Label "Q" lacquer
blanks—and this was in fact a professional grade of blank disc that was
widely used for broadcast recordings in 1938. There are no paper labels
visible—either they've fallen off or were never applied, and it's
impossible to read the inscription in the picture to see if it sheds any
light on the origin of these discs.

There have been a lot of stories over the years about "original
discs"—someone approached me a couple of years ago about appraising a set of
"original WOTW discs" for insurance purposes—but when they wouldn’t at
least show me a scan of the discs I got very suspicious. There are
plenty of stories in circulation about "friends of friends' fathers who
had a set of discs"—but without expert authentication, I would take
all such stories with a carload of salt.

Even if these $14,000 discs are originals, though, the audio quality
depends a lot on where along the network line they were recorded. The
only way to get a studio-quality recording of WOTW is to find a set of
discs recorded directly off the program amplifier—and CBS wasn’t doing
this in 1938, instead using various contract studios when recordings of
various programs were needed. The quality of any discs found would be
limited by the quality of the line linking the network to the recording
studio. A recording of WOTW made off the line in Hollywood will be
inferior in sound quality to a recording made off the line in New York.

I can still hear their "noise gates" (makes quiet
portions of audio even quieter, like silences between
words, etc) working on my best copies of WOTW, I think
that today's processing equipment is more transparent -
am I hoping for too much?
I have heard some other audio cleanups that are
like NIGHT and DAY, absolutely incredible. Can that be
done to the original WOTW recording? Maybe it already
has, the original sounds like garbage, and with cleanup
sounds as good as it ever will, now.

So far as my own ears are concerned, none of the "digitally restored"
CD versions of WOTW are worth owning—they seem to all be bootlegged
off the early 1970s LP issue, and attempt to mask the surface noise of
that version with poorly-applied noise reduction. Until and unless a set
of authenticated original discs shows up for a real remastering, a
mint/near mint copy of the LP, properly transferred, is probably the best
bet for decent audio quality.

This LP is dirt common, and can still be had fairly cheaply on eBay,
although sealed copies are harder to find. In addition to the original
double-LP issue, Evolution 4001, this transfer was reissued on the Murray
Hill label (44217) and—as a single disc—on Longines Symphonette
(4001), with all versions using the same cover art depicting the front
page of the New York Daily News from the morning after the broadcast,
against a lurid red-orange background. Look for the "Released by
arrangement with Manheim Fox Enterprises" credit line on the jacket and
the disc label to ensure you're getting the right one. If I had to
choose, an original Evolution pressing would probably sound best, but the
Murray Hill or Longines versions will still be better than any modern CD
issue.

The source discs for the Manheim Fox-authorized issue remain a mystery,
at least to me. They are clearly not the 1948 copy discs. Has anyone
ever actually seen them? Might they be the same discs later owned by
Ralph Murchow and just recently auctioned? Manheim Fox was a 1970s
theatrical impresario who had some business connection to Howard Koch
(his name also appears in connection with Koch's "Panic Broadcast" book)
but that's as much as I know about him.

There are other LP versions besides the authorized Manheim Fox
releases—the first version issued came out on the Audio Rarities label in 1955,
but was of very poor quality and was not complete. Avoid this one unless
you're a manic WOTW collector—it's interesting to own as a curiosity,
but it's really not worth listening to.

Hello. Recently, there has been a discussion of "War of the
Worlds," so I thought I would ask my own question. I know that
Charlie Mccarthy was on NBC, and the Mercury Theater was on CBS.
But, what was on Mutual and the soon-to-be ABC network? I have not
seen this discussed before.

Most of Mutual's eastern and midwestern affiliates were carrying a
program of classical music—part of a continuing series of Bach
cantatas as performed by the WOR Symphony under the direction of
Alfred Wallerstien. Not all MBS stations carried this, however—the
Colonial network in New England broke away from Mutual to carry
Father Coughlin, and it's likely that many other Mutual affiliates
around the country did the same: Coughlin paid cash up front, and the
Wallerstien musical show was an unsponsored sustainer.

The NBC Blue network, meanwhile, was carrying "Out Of The West," a
program of "narrated" dance music from San Francisco under the
direction of Ernest Gill. This was also an unsponsored show.

Of course, not all CBS stations carried the Mercury Theatre—the
program was hard to hear in New England, where WEEI in Boston broke
away from the network to carry a local public-affairs program in the
eight-to-nine PM slot.

With the 62nd anniversary of "War of the World" approaching, exactly
where was the New York studio where the broadcast originated? If the
building is still standing, is the studio still in use?

CBS headquarters from 1929 thru 1964 were located at 485 Madison
Avenue, a 25-story office building at the corner of Madison and 52nd
in Manhattan. CBS didn’t own the building—they merely leased
several floors, including studios, offices, and technical facilities.
When they first moved in, the network occupied the twentieth thru the
twenty-fourth floors (some of the studios were two stories high) but
gradually took more space until CBS finally occupied ten floors of
the building. WOTW was broadcast from Studio One, on the 20th Floor,
home to most of CBS-NY's large-scale non-audience dramatic shows thru
the radio era. The studio was converted for television in the late
forties, and its designation changed to Studio 71.

The building still exists, although it's been totally remodeled several
times since CBS left. There is still a broadcasting presence—station
WADO, a Spanish-language news-talk outlet, has its offices and studios
on the third floor, but there are no links to the old CBS facilities. For
many years, Mad magazine's editorial offices were at 485 Madison, but
most of the building now houses a faceless assortment of public relations
and law firms, insurance companies, and charitable foundations. On the
ground floor you'll find a number of retail establishments, including a
Leonidas chocolate shop and a "Body Shop" cosmetics store. On the 20th
floor, CBS's former space is now occupied by a venture capital firm
called "Northwood Ventures," with nothing remaining from the old days.

It seems to be taken as an article of faith these days that a fair
number of people who were taken in by the 1938 "War of the Worlds"
broadcast were deceived because they started out the hour listening
to Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy, started flipping around the dial
during the first musical interlude (this was supposedly typical
behavior for many of the Bergen's listeners, who found the musical
portions of the show dull)

There is substantial, documented support for the idea that
many WOTW listeners joined the program late—a CBS poll conducted
the week after the broadcast determined that 42 per cent of those who
heard at least part of WOTW tuned in while the program was in
progress, but I seriously question whether much of that late-tuning
can be laid specifically at the feet of Nelson Eddy, the Chase and
Sanborn Hour musical star who is usually mentioned as the cause of
the dial twisting. This is, to my interpretation of the facts, one of
radio's more popular myths.

It was Hadley Cantril who first discussed what I call the "Nelson
Eddy Tuneout" theory in his 1940 Princeton University study "The
Invasion From Mars," but his reasoning, and the statistical support
for it, are rarely quoted in full—and if you examine his findings
closely, you'll see that what Cantril's research actually determined
is not what most OTR histories portray.

Cantril sent out a total of 846 survey cards to people known to have
listened to WOTW at least in part, asking if they had at any time
during the 8 to 9 pm hour listened to even a portion of the Chase and
Sanborn Hour. 518 of these cards were returned, with eighteen per
cent of those respondents indicating that they had heard part of the
C&S Hour that evening—and sixty-two per cent of those
listeners indicating that they had tuned out at the conclusion of
Bergen's first routine.

This sounds impressive until you do the math. Eighteen per cent of
518 respondents is approximately 93—and 62 per cent of that is 57.
In other words, Fifty-seven listeners out of 518 surveyed—or a bit
less than 12 per cent of the total WOTW listeners surveyed—spun
the dial to Welles after the first Bergen routine. This is
significant, but hardly a mass tune-out for the Chase and Sanborn
Hour—and most importantly, it doesn’t include the vast
majority of listeners who stayed tuned to the C&S Hour for the
entire program: Cantril's survey involved only listeners who
had heard at least some portion of WOTW, without a "control group" of
listeners who had been listening to other programs, and that leaves
the results open to easy misinterpretation - especially when you
consider that the C&S Hour had a 10/30/38 Hooperrating of 34.7,
compared to the Mercury Theatre's 3.6: or approximately 35 million
listeners for C&S compared to about 4 million for Welles. And, of
course, if 12 per cent of Cantril's WOTW sample listener group tuned
in after Bergen completed his first routine, we are left with the
simple truth that an overwhelming majority of 88 percent of WOTW
listeners surveyed by Cantril did not. And, if eighteen per cent of
WOTW listeners had tuned over at any point from the C&S
hour (and this figure must also include those who tuned from
WOTW to C&S), we are left with the stark reality that a
whopping 82 per cent of Cantril's sample didn’t hear any part
of the Chase and Sanborn Hour—not Bergen, not Eddy, not
Ameche—none of it. They were instead tuning out on Father Coughlin, or
Alfred Wallerstien and the WOR Symphony or Ernest Gill and his
Orchestra, or some obscure local public affairs show. Seen in this
light, the "Nelson Eddy Tuneout" recedes into insignificance.
Cantril's sample was of necessity a small one—but it does offer a
perspective on this story that is based on fact and not on legend.

The way the "Nelson Eddy Tuneout" is often discussed when considering
WOTW is, to me, a sign of how different audiences are today compared
to those of 1938. The style of music with which Eddy is most often
associated, operetta-type pieces done in that keening singing-mountie
voice, isn’t something that most people today are familiar with. Many
of us don’t like it, so we assume that most people in 1938 didn’t
like it—and the "Nelson Eddy Tuneout" assumes a much greater
importance in the WOTW story than it really should have. What's
missed in these discussions is a consideration of just how popular
Nelson Eddy really was!

Eddy was, in fact, one of the most-loved figures on the air in 1938,
and was billed and heavily promoted as one of the stars of the Chase
and Sanborn Hour - not just an added attraction, but a full-scale
star, receiving equal billing to Bergen and McCarthy. In
Radio Guide's 1938 "Star Of Stars" poll, Eddy was the
overwhelming choice as best male singer of classical
songs—continuing a winning streak which began in 1936—and was even
number two in the "Best Actor" voting, finishing behind only his
C&S colleague Don Ameche. Such was Eddy's popularity, in fact,
that when he left the C&S Hour in 1939, Radio Guide marked
the occasion with a full-page tribute expressing the hope that he
would soon return to the air.

In other words, most OTR fans today may not care for Eddy's style
(although I personally think his version of "Song Of The Vagabonds"
is quite stirring!)—but we shouldn’t make the mistake of
assuming that listeners in the OTR era itself felt the same way, and
allowing that assumption to give us a bogus perspective on an
important historical event.

Elizabeth
(who heartily recommends Snopes' website as the most valuable
bull-shattering resource on the web.)

it's Nelson's first musical numbers that got people switching stations to
hear the early news interruptions and simulations;

The "Nelson Eddy Tuneout" is one of those things that everyone's read
about—and it's a great story. But it didn’t quite happen that way if
you step back and take a careful look at the evidence. I've discussed
this issue before, but it's always worth summing up once again for those
who may have tuned in late.

In his post-broadcast research, Princeton University Professor Hadley
Cantril sent out a total of 846 survey cards to people in the New
York-New Jersey area known to have listened to WOTW at least in part,
asking if they had at any time during the 8 to 9 pm hour listened to even
a portion of the Chase and Sanborn Hour. 518 of these cards were
returned, with eighteen per cent of those respondents indicating that
they had heard part of the C&S Hour that evening—and sixty-two per
cent of those listeners indicating that they had tuned out at the
conclusion of Bergen's first routine—NOT at the beginning of
Eddy's first song, which occurred at approximately 2:17 into the
broadcast. (Charlie McCarthy has a few quick lines in the opening of the
program, exchanging a quip or two with Judy Canova, but this is far from
a "routine." Bergen-as-himself is not heard at all before Eddy's song.)

Bergen's first routine ended at 14:56 and was immediately followed by the
introduction to Dorothy Lamour's rendition of "Two Sleepy People." The
song began at 15:18, and Cantril's research indicates that the majority
of people who heard portions of both the C&S Hour and WOTW twisted the
dial at approximately this time. The point is worth repeating: according
to the only available scientific poll of the actual 10/30/38 audience,
only eighteen per cent of the total audience for WOTW had joined the
program after tuning out on the C&S Hour, and most of those that did
so—twelve per cent of the total WOTW audience—did so after the first
Bergen-McCarthy routine: at the start of Lamour's song, not Eddy's.
Extrapolating from estimated audience figures for that evening, a
reasonable approximation is that the total number of listeners
dial-twisting from NBC to CBS at this point fell somewhere between
480,000 and 600,000 people. Considering that the total estimated audience
for the C&S Hour that evening was in the area of 35,000,000 people, this
tuneout is far from a mass defection.

Nelson Eddy was one of the most popular performers on radio in 1938—he
was the overwhelming choice for Best Male Singer of Classical Songs in
that year's Radio Guide Star of Stars poll, and finished second in the
"Best Actor" category. His following was huge, especially among
women—many of whom considered him, and not Bergen, to be the true star of the
Chase & Sanborn Hour. And as Cantril's research demonstrates, Eddy simply
can’t be held responsible for any "mass tuneout."

Well, facts is pesky things, as someone once said, so let me read Tom
some 1938 news reports from the day after the broadcast:

John Houseman (Welles' co-producer for the Mercury Theatre) had an
interesting theory about the press coverage of the aftermath of the
panic—suggesting that newspapers grabbed onto the story with particular
vigor because they were still stinging over how badly they had been
scooped by radio in covering the Sudetenland/Munich crisis. Given the
tensions which characterised radio/press relations in the thirties, there
is quite likely truth to this. It's also important to note that much of
the press coverage was based on hearsay and was, in the Princeton study,
demonstrated to have been without basis.

Ten years after the event, Princeton University commissioned a
scholarly study of the incident and its conclusion was that of the
estimated six million people who heard the broadcast, nearly two
million was convinced the program was authentic.

This is hardly a small percentage......

The study was actually mounted in 1940, two years after the broadcast,
and Hadley Cantril, a professor of psychology at Princeton, wrote an
exhaustive study of the results. Based on the data from the study,
Cantril estimated that only about a million people nationwide heard the
broadcast from the beginning (an estimate based on average Crossley
ratings for previous programs in the series)—but that the audience
increased to at least six million more by the mid-point of the show. Of
these, Cantril estimates that 1.7 million people interpreted the program
as a news broadcast—and of these, about 1.2 million were actually
moved to "do something," from calling a relative on the mild side to
fleeing into the night on the extreme.

Given that in 1938 there were approximately 27.5 million radio homes in
the US, 1.2 million is a pretty small slice of the total audience. And
given that the total population of the US in 1938 was about 138 million,
I'd suggest that 1.2 million of that total would seem to fit the
definition of a small percentage. Cantril's evidence would suggest that
the overwhelming majority of Americans didn’t even know about the
broadcast until they looked at their newspapers the next morning.

I and another digest member had been offered a set of WOTW discs at
separate times, and both of us noted that the discs were dated as being a
1948 dub. I seem to recall a scan of yellow labels. Maybe that is what CBS
now has.

I was asked to authenticate this same set of discs eight or nine years
ago, and the yellow labels were Radio Recorders labels, which would
definitely not be an original CBS New York recording, since RR was always
a Los Angeles studio. My understanding has always been that prior to
acquiring its own equipment, CBS did its inhouse recordings via a direct
line to Raymond Scott's Universal Recording Company studio at the RKO
Building, and discs from at least one other Mercury Theatre program (the
"Dracula" program) have surfaced with Universal labels. These were 16
inch discs, not 12 inch.

The existing WOTW recordings were quite evidently not taken from 12 inch
discs—there would be disc joins every five minutes if this were the
case, and even with a precision editing job these would still be evident
in the audio on a close listening.

That being so, I'd suggest that the most likely form for the original
master discs to exist in would as two 16" Universal Recording Company
linechecks.

The Murchow discs, as I recall, had no labels——but they were cut on
Presto Q-type blanks such as would have been used in 1938. Without
actually examining the discs in person, that's as far as any
authentication can go.

It's entirely possible that more than one set of discs was made at the
time of the original broadcast—anyone associated with the production
could have ordered an aircheck from any of the recording studios in New
York at the time, but so far as I know, only Universal had a direct wire
to the CBS line.

Ken Greenwald

I may have some additional information that might help the concern over the
"various" recordings of War of the Worlds:

Michael Biel did an excellent job of answering Chris Holm's question about
where the recordings came from.

This much I do know: Orson Welles had recordings of the broadcast made for
his own use. They were, however, 78 rpm recordings. I know this for a fact
because Welles donated his personal recordings to the PPB Archives, and I
have seen them. Each 12 inch 78 disc is able to contain only 5 minutes of
recording. That means 3 discs are needed, recorded on both sides, to equal 30
minutes of playing time. That is exactly how the discs were recorded. I
personally doubt the 78 recordings were made off the line while the broadcast
was being aired.

More than likely the 78 discs are copy discs that Welles made off the network
discs. Which network discs from which station, I have no idea. I am assuming,
perhaps incorrectly, that Welles had the 78s made from 16" ET master discs in
Los Angeles. I do believe that CBS, as well as NBC, did have record cutters
by the time of the broadcast. If the released copies of the show are from the
78s, there is a way to be sure of this. Since the 78s break every 5 minutes,
that means the sound changes. Playing a 78 from the outside in, gives you
better sound at the outside of the disc because it spreads the sound over
longer grooves, thus making the treble and bass more distinct. As the sound
gets closer to the spindle the sound gets bassy. Now, switch to the second
disc and the sound will be clearer. If you have a copy of WOTW, clock this
every five minutes and listen for a change in sound. If there is a change,
then the copy you have came from 78 discs, probably Welles personal discs.

About the possibility of there being a recreation made a few weeks later.
Not likely. No evidence of that. Nyet. Zero. No reason for that to happen.

Also, there WAS a rehearsal disc made of the show before broadcast. I know
this because Richard Wilson and Paul Stewart, both Welles assistants on the
Mercury Theater On The Air (as well as actors) came to PPB and talked about
the show at our Nostalgia Night. Richard Wilson stated that the rehearsal
disc was once in his possession. Wilson said that while the rehearsal was
going on, somewhere towards the middle of the rehearsal, Welles dropped his
script to the side of his body and said “"This is the worst piece of crap I've
ever had to do!” Everyone broke out laughing because it was an unexpected
statement from Welles and Wilson decided that he wanted to keep the rehearsal
discs because he loved what Welles had said. Later, Wilson moved to another
house and lost the rehearsal discs somehow. He said it broke his heart
because that rehearsal is important in relation to what happened to Welles
after the broadcast.

So, YES, there was a rehearsal disc. Wilson talked about it, and Paul Stewart
confirmed it. That Nostalgia Night was recorded and is in the PPB Archives,
along with dozens of others. Besides I have copies of other Mercury Theater
presentations that are rehearsals, including "Treasure Island," and "The 39
Steps." Little did Welles realize this one show would turn his career around
and make him a national figure.

So, one source of WOTW could possibly be Welles personal 78 discs. Another is
that copies were made off of network discs. Network discs were often made in
different states in different cities. In other words, even if a line
recording wasn’t made in New York (which I doubt), there could have been a
line recording made in Chicago, in Detroit, Los Angeles, or at any of the 5
flagship stations the network had across the nation.

Ken Greenwald

Mike Ogden

Paul Urbahns asked if there existed a complete cast list for the "War
of the Worlds" broadcast. It is, of course, one of the very few
Mercury Theatre radio shows where the cast is not mentioned at the
conclusion of the broadcast. I have what I believe to be a pretty
definitive listing, since I obtained it directly from the CBS Program
Files in NYC a number of years ago.

Their cast list for "The War of the Worlds" was as follows: Paul
Stewart, Kenneth Delmar, William Alland, William Herz, Ray Collins,
Howard Smith, Stefan Schnabel, Frank Readick, Carl Frank, Richard
Wilson.

Of course, that still leaves the big question of exactly who played
what. I've managed to come up with a partial identification of
performers with parts, some of it quite speculative (and possibly
spurious), and I share it here in the hope that it will spur others
who are perhaps better at voice identification than I am to offer
their own comments and challenges.

Before the first round of objections arises, I should point out that
several of these identifications are "from the horse's mouth." That
is to say, the actor himself declared that he had played
such-and-such a role. Back in the 1970s my friend Harry Goldman
interviewed Stefan Schnabel, and it was in that interview (as I
mentioned here a couple of weeks ago) that Schnabel said that he had
played Farmer Wilmuth. In 1977 Dick Wilson told me that one of the
parts he had played was a commander of the militia. And Carl Frank,
in an interview conducted sometime in the 60s by the then-president
of the Agnes Moorehead Fan Club, affirmed that he had played the
Artilleryman, and he vividly remembered being alone in the studio
with Orson and having a vague but growing feeling that something was
amiss.

A while back someone credited Stefan Schnabel as the voice of
Farmer Wilmuth on the "War of the Worlds" broadcast. That role was
played on-air by Ray Collins.

That was me that credited Schnabel as "Farmer Wilmuth," based on an
interview that my friend Harry Goldman conducted with him in the
1970s. The exact statement that Schnabel made about his role in "The
War of the Worlds" was as follows: "I was the first one to be killed
by the Martians, a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer." Now, of course, that's
not strictly true—Wilmuth wasn’t the first to perish, but rather
three police officers who were advancing on the capsule with a flag
of truce. But, anyhow, that was Schnabel's claim.

Someone else had asked for a castlist for the famous broadcast. So
far, Bill Nadel and I have been able to identify the following roles,
using the list of actors that were written on Howard Koch's
personal script.

Several months ago I submitted to the Digest my own list of who I
thought was playing what part, and it's interesting and (hopefully)
informative to compare it with the list that Anthony and Bill have
compiled. Incidentally, in addition to the actors already listed, the
CBS Program Files also identified Howard Smith in the WOTW cast.

Okay, in order of appearance, we have the following identifications
and speculations:

NEW YORK STUDIO ANNOUNCER: Tagging him as the "weather announcer," Anthony
and Bill say that it's Paul Stewart. To me, it sounds like Dan Seymour, the
regular MERCURY THEATRE ON THE AIR announcer.

MERIDIAN ROOM ANNOUNCER: My guess is William Alland.

CARL PHILLIPS: Frank Readick.

PROFESSOR RICHARD PIERSON: Orson Welles.

SECOND STUDIO ANNOUNCER: We agree on Carl Frank (identified in Anthony's
list as "announcer #3").

POLICEMAN AT WILMUTH FARM: Kenny Delmar.

MR. WILMUTH: Paul Stewart remembered it as being Ray Collins. Stefan
Schnabel remembered it as being himself.

BRIGADIER GENERAL MONTGOMERY SMITH: Anthony and Bill say it's Paul
Stewart. Richard Wilson, when I interviewed him in 1977, remembered that he
played the part.

HARRY MCDONALD: Ray Collins.

CAPTAIN LANSING: Kenny Delmar.

THIRD STUDIO ANNOUNCER: We agree on Paul Stewart (identified by Anthony as
"announcer #4").

THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR: Kenny Delmar.

OFFICER, 22ND FIELD ARTILLERY: Anthony and Bill identify this voice as
Richard Wilson.

GUNNER: Anthony and Bill identify William Alland.

OBSERVER: We agree on Stefan Schnabel.

LIEUTENANT VOGHT: ???????

BAYONNE RADIO OPERATOR: Anthony and Bill identify Kenny Delmar, which they
list as "operator #1".

NEWARK RADIO OPERATOR: Some confusion here, as Anthony and Bill list
Richard Wilson as "voice of Newark" and William Herz as "operator #3"
(which, sequentially, is what the Newark operator is).

RADIO OPERATOR 2X2L: Frank Readick.

RADIO OPERATOR 8X3R: ??????

BROADCASTING BUILDING ROOFTOP ANNOUNCER: Ray Collins.

THE STRANGER aka THE ARTILLERYMAN: Carl Frank.

It might be worthwhile to gather some more ideas concerning this
puzzle. I know that there's several people among the Digest
subscribers who have a personal predilection and talent for doing
voice identification. How about some of you folks making "The War of
the Worlds" a pet project?
It's certainly quite possible, as Anthony suggests, that there could
be faulty memories clouding some of the issues here. One of the worst
faulty memories was put forth by Carl Frank when he was interviewed
in the 1960s by the president of the Agnes Moorehead Fan Club. Frank
"remembered" Moorehead as being a member of the WOTW cast and as
helping to answer the phone calls that came pouring in afterwards.
Hello?!!! While Moorehead had appeared in several of the original
Mercury summer broadcasts, when the show switched to Sundays in the
fall she was unable to continue as a cast member due to her regular
Sunday night comedy gig on the Phil Baker show. Furthermore, I defy
any listener to find even one female voice anywhere in the broadcast
of "The War of the Worlds."

Is there a source where I can learn of the entire radio cast for War of the
Worlds? I know that Orson Welles, of course, was Professor Piersen and
Frank Readick was Carl Phillips. Who were the other voices? I think I
recognized Ray Collins and Kenny Delmar, but I'm not sure.

Yes. I copied the actors' names off Howard Koch's personal copy of the
script some years ago, and Bill Nadel and I put together a cast credits list
based on voice IDs, the recollections of cast members (including my former
neighbor Kenny Delmar) and rehearsal-director Paul Stewart. These credits
were previously published in Radio Spirits' THE GREATEST OTR SHOWS FROM
SCIENCE FICTION selected by RAY BRADBURY 60-show set (which I highly
recommend):

...Now as to the question of whether Welles and the other people in the studio
were aware of the panic: Dick Wilson personally told me that after he had
finished his last role in the broadcast, he decided to leave and go back to
the theater where they were rehearsing "Danton's Death."

As he left the studio, he chucked his copy of the script in the garbage
can. He made a point of telling me this because he wanted to emphasize how
bad everybody thought the show was. Dick was the self-appointed "saver" of
the Mercury Theatre. From the time he joined in 1937, he saved everything
connected with Orson and the Mercury that he could get his hands on:
transcription recordings, scripts, photographs, correspondence, memos,
production notes...everything. At the time that his Welles collection went
to Indiana University there were over 17,000 items in it. So the fact that
he trashed his script of WOTW shows how much he felt that "it was the worst
show we had ever done." He didn’t even want to be reminded of it by having
the script around!

But...having tossed the script, he stepped out of the studio into the
hallway and went directly to the elevator. As the elevator doors opened,
two policemen stepped out and headed for the studio. So, before the
"newscast" portion of the broadcast was even over, the people inside the
studio had to have become aware that something unusual was going on.

In later years, Welles would sometimes claim that he had deliberately
created the panic. But I think another statement of his is much closer to
the truth: he said that, going into the broadcast, he had the thought that
a certain "lunatic fringe" of the population might be stirred up by it.
But, he added, "we had no idea to what extent or how large that lunatic
fringe was." ...

Mike Ogden

Brian Lee Corber

Subject: the radioplay of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
Date: 1/7/2005
From: CORBERAMA@aol.com
To: Jeff560@aol.com

Hi!

I am an avowed WAR OF THE WORLDS buff. In 1976 I produced my own version of the Koch radioplay. I changed a lot of it, added a musical score in the background, but one advantage I had over the TV movie "The Night that Panicked America" which inspired my own production: I correctly recognized all of the classical music (piano) that had been used in the original broadcast which they did not.

Re: the music: it appears that Bernard Herrmann who conducted the orchestra and performed the piano pieces composed only one original cue for the show. The end title, as it were (not the Tchaikovsky) which he later used in the end title to "Jane Eyre" circa 1944. I had thought that the intermission music was original but it emanates from a piece by Debussy.

I also learned that the broadcast was nationwide—in other words, the cast did not return 3 hours later for the west coast feed. I learned this from a microfilm of the Los Angeles Times dated Oct. 30, 1938. The Mercury Theater came on at 5:00 p.m. that Sunday night.

Good show!

Brian Lee Corber

Subject: more on War of the Worlds
Date: 2/17/2005
From: pollock@umich.edu
To: CORBERAMA@aol.com, Jeff560@aol.com, old.time.radio@oldradio.net

I just happened on to the interesting correspondence on

http://jeff560.tripod.com/wotw.html

which up to then I did not know existed, since I am not a WOTW aficionado.

However, for what it's worth, here's some info if it is of any use to you:

a) My father. Meyer Pollock, was a violinist with the studio version (only six or 8 violinists) of the CBS orchestra (Bernard Herrmann, conducting), and played for almost all of the Mercury Theater broadcasts - as well as in the quartet on "Let's Pretend". Although he died in 1975 and so is not available for confirmation of details, I fondly recall his telling me about what happened after the broadcast:

What I have no doubt is absolutely true: not having a clue about the reaction, my father came down to the lobby of 485 Mad Ave and was astounded to see the place crawling with police; he was not allowed to leave and was asked to go back up to the studio where he would be "questioned about his role in the incident".

Less reliably "true: my father was concerned about coming home late (the trains on the Brighton line of the BMT were few and far between after 1:00pm on Sundays) so he and a buddy took the elevator up only a few floors, and then left the building via the back stairs.

Even less reliable: Mitch Miller was the oboist in the orchestra.

b) Interesting but true sad anecdote: My father was in the habit of regularly bringing home radio scripts to give to my much older cousin (I was only 2 in 1938, my cousin was 13 or 14) who was as interested in radio production as youngsters are in TV production these days. He often got Orson Welles to sign them, but this was dicey. On the WOTW evening my father ended up with an un-signed sound-effect man's copy (it was a man, and it was a carbon copy) of the script, but for some reason (probably related to the post-show confusion) it never got to my cousin and instead ended up with a bunch of miscellaneous music sheets (and other scripts) in his CBS locker. Since my cousin soon got involved in other things and then went overseas, I ended up with a rather large script collection, which actually helped spur my own interest in radio (I revered Norman Corwin, and eventually won an Edgar Award for a radio play I wrote in high school.) But, I had no idea that that particular copy of any script was more "valuable" than any other, and one day in the late 1940's I took a bunch of them to school with me to show my teacher and classmates the markings and cues the actors (and sound men!) the made during rehearsals. I made sure not to bring the Joseph Cotten ones, however, or my sister would have killed me. As you might have guessed, the WOTW somehow never made it back home, but surprisingly my father wasn’t particularly upset—I really think he did not know there might have been any kind of "value" in these flimsy carbon copies.

Subject: Re: more on War of the Worlds
Date: 2/18/2005
From: CORBERAMA
To: pollock@umich.edu, Jeff560, old.time.radio@oldradio.net

Wow. Every scrap of info on WOTW is of interest to me. Curious: did your father ever comment on Bernard Herrmann? Any comment?

I just recently learned that the intermission music for WOTW, which I had thought was original with Herrmann (it's just, essentially, 8 notes), comes from Debussy's Pelleas and Mellisande prelude. This means that the only original music written by Herrmann for the show was the "end title" (later re-used as the end title to the 1944 film JANE EYRE). The piano pieces were all by Chopin, then there's the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto (re-arranged) and all those dance pieces.

I note from Howard Koch's book (released on paperbook) and interesting item about the copyright in the radioplay. I would have thought that CBS owned the script inasmuch as I believe Koch was an employee of CBS in 1938 and it would have been "work for hire" as it existed in 1938.